We’re hosting a launch and screening for Strange Attractors, a book and DVD includes the work of 70 artists, writers and filmmakers exploring possible extraterrestrial life forms and their multifarious sexual desires¬–part speculative scientific exploration and part artistic imagination. The book is a joint publication of Encyclopedia Destructica and The Institute of Extraterrestrial Sexuality.

According to recent scientific reports, there may be between 8 billion and 13 billion life bearing planets in our galaxy alone. With numbers like that we will certainly encounter living beings from outer space someday. When we do, what will they look like? What special parts will they have, and how will they “do it?” Will we find what they do sexy, incomprehensible or just plain gross? You can find the answers to these questions and more in Strange Attractors: Investigations in Non-Humanoid Extraterrestrial Sexualities, an extraordinary 288 page, full color, book and 120 minute DVD encompassing art, writing and film. The Book retails for $49.95 and can be purchased here

Contributors include: Amy Gerstler, David Horvitz, Shana Moulton, Anselm Berrigan, Peggy Ahwesh, Thomas Scioli, Suzanne Wright, Jacob Ciocci and many more. For example, Andrew Negrey’s collages illustrate a variety of couplings including a ‘Green Diver’ lusting after buoyant ‘Globalls’ on unregistered planet 311OPEL, Adam Atkinson’s prose explores “The Sexual Habits of ExtraTerrestrials as Observed by Jules Verne;” and in Shana Moulton’s humorous video, “Green Portal 43,” extraterrestrials create an erotic film based on observed human behaviors that arouse them during a visit to Earth.

While science fiction literature and film have often touched on extraterrestrial sexuality, these encounters are frequently represented as between a human and a humanoid extraterrestrial. Gender is often portrayed as binary even when it is homosexual. Sexual encounters consist primarily of engagements between two beings. Inspired by Kepler, NASA’s first mission capable of finding Earthsize planets around other stars, Suzie Silver of The Institute of Extraterrestrial Sexuality says, “this project has gone beyond male and female, beyond queer, beyond any notion of gender, beyond the anthropomorphic to erotic possibilities as vastly varied as the Milky Way itself.”

FInd more information and a full list of contributing artists, writers and filmmakers “here”:http://strangeattractors.encyclopediadestructica.com

“Encyclopedia Destructica”:http://www.encyclopediadestructica.com/ is a community-based artist book publisher based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania founded in 2005.

“The Institute of Extraterrestrial Sexuality (IES)”:http://extraterrestrialsexuality.org/ uses art and speculative science to creatively explore and imagine extraterrestrial sexualities. Suzie Silver founded IES in 2009.